Your employer didn't pay shit for your benefits

[OffWithTheirHeads]

I just got my benefit statement from the United States department of Social Security. In the taxpayer paid for missive was a number of paragraphs telling me that "My employer" had made substantial contributions, etc. etc. blah, blah, blah. They try to sell the same chamber of commerce, pseudo capitalist bullshit about unemployment insurance and I can't believe how the masses drink the cool-aid.

Lets get this straight. Your employer DOES NOT PAY FOR SHIT! YOU, the worker, provide a service to your employer that your employer finds valuable enough
that he can sell it at a profit. Your employer sells your labor at a high enough profit that all of your benefits, along with your employer's overhead, which often includes season tickets to the game, lunches, dinners and assorted "business related" junkets, his cell phone bill, his gas card, etc., along with a profit, are included.

The capitalist, government entities would have you believe that your employer, out of the goodness of his black, capitalist heart, grants you extra money to help you pay for S.S.I., S.DI., unemployment insurance and all of the rest of the things they take out of your check every week. This is bullshit.

It is all your money. You earned it. It was not gifted to you by your employer! Think I'm wrong? Ask yourself this. When has your employer EVER, magnanimously, continued to pay into these funds AFTER you have been laid off, fired or quit your job? Bottom line. If you don't earn the money for your employer, your employer won't give you squat!

It's not his money, it's yours. You are the one who gave up days of your life to earn it.

And the next time, at the unemployment office, when some minimum wage cube rat tries to tell you how gracious your employer was to have paid into this fund for you, don't let them make you feel guilty and grateful. Let them know that you know that it was YOU, not your employer, who paid for these benefits!.

[tularetom]

1. The only reason he didn't put that money into his own pocket

was that some 'liberal' government policy forced him to pay it out in benefits.

[dysfunctional press]

9. my employer DID put it into their own pockets...see my post, #8, below.

nt

[Captain Angry]

2. The only problem I have with your post is this:

The minimum wage cube rat isn't lying to you on purpose, and is just trying to make a living as well, so don't be too hard on them.

Yes, I've been a cube rat that was dumped on because of a decision made by somebody 12 levels higher than me on an org-chart. :-)

[OffWithTheirHeads]

4. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that.

I have just heard the party line dispensed with contempt at the unemployment office by people who think of us, the unwashed masses, with contempt.

[Captain Angry]

6. It takes a special kind of person to work very long in an unemployment office.

Especially in the hard times.

If I had to do that, I'd probably shut it all out. Until I hung myself.

[spag68]

3. To further your hypothesis

Most of these "good hearted" employers have figured out ways to avoid paying taxes on their profits, there fore you as a taxpayer pay yourself for any benefits you get. Remember this, only A worker has no control over what is on your w-2. they sit in their big offices and laugh about these things. Of course there are actually good employers who share the wealth, but if you are not in at the beginning of their wealth making, you are likely to get left out.

[MercutioATC]

5. Actually, my "employer" does.

..and, since you're one of my employers, I thank you.

MercutioATC...air traffic controller and FAA employee.

[Patchuli]

7. Would you like to borrow my

---------------{___} ? That bug would drive me crazy! Maybe it's just because we (out in the country) are getting inundated with summer flies and thirsty ants in the kitchen! My poor cats are doing double-time duty!

[MercutioATC]

10. Actually, it was meant to be annoying.

I've just been feeling ornery lately, so I adopted it a few days ago.

I'm sure I'll get bored with it in the near future (mostly because it annoys me too).

[Occulus]

30. I have a DLP television, and this actually happens

EVERY time I see that damn animated bug, for just a moment, I think a bug got into the TV again. It looks exactly like that bug picture when it happens.

[napi21]

54. Well, I gotta thank you for convincing me that I'm an idiot this AM!

I saw that stupid little flea and thought it was on MY MONITOR! I even went as far as to try to squish it with my finger! I don't know how you did that, but you really had me going for a while!

[spag68]

12. bug thing

freaks me out too, I keep trying to squash it on the screen.

[Liberal In Texas]

21. Got me too! And I've seen it before.

DUH.
:blush:

[slutticus]

63. Hi Mercutio...where do you work?

I like to listen to the ATC communications on this site...

http://www.liveatc.net/

Maybe I've hear you!



(don't ask me why I like to do this....I'm just a dork...)

[dysfunctional press]

8. my employer DID steal my benefit money.

i became disabled when i was 38. i had a sit-down with the SS officer(okay, so they aren't "officers- it just sounded scarier to say 'SS officer') and he starts going over my numbers, and asks me about the two-year gap in my employment...what two-year gap? says i...
this one here, from 1979-1981...
i was working as a construction laborer for a company called national pre-cast. during 1979, we spent 4 months working 6 12-hour days a week. i was exhausted, but i was making tons of money- and saving it because i never had time to spend it...since my working "career" ended at age 38, i only had just over 20 years of earned wages and fica contributions- except that national pre-cast never paid into the SS the money they had deducted from my checks two decades prior- and it represented over 12% of my total benefits- so my monthly benefit is now that much lower than it should be. and since the company had been bankrupt and gone over 15 years at that point- i had/have NO recourse.
and i know for a fact that i was NOT the only one the company did it to- i assume that it was s.o.p. for all employees...and a lot of them won't find out what i found out until they reach retirement, too. at least it won't be as big a chunk of the kitty for most of them, most likely.

[spag68]

14. Please refer to my post #3

[old mark]

20. Question all, it happened to me, too

I worked for a company pouring basements for housing developments. I did not get my pay check one week, called the office - no answer. Stopped at the office - sign is gone, there is acheap folding card table inside with an empty plastic coffee cup and the phone and nothing else at all.

Went to the employment office to see about collecting, was told the company had not paid in a dime for any benefits for me, and after checking, for any other employee all season.

I was able to collect, and I did so for a long while. PA has a fund to provide for people in this situation, or did have - this was about 25 years ago.
Never heard yet from my former employers - they still owe me 2 weeks pay.

mark

[TexasObserver]

59. Sadly, that does happen, and it's not right to you.

In those circumstances, the government should have to give you the credits you deserve. It's their job, not yours, to assure that your employer pays the benefits dollars in to the government.

[dysfunctional press]

64. if i would have had the 20-year old check stubs, i might have gotten credit...

from what i was told by the guy at the ss. it would have verified the amounts taken out.
it made me wonder how long the i.r.s. keeps records on file- because my w-2 forms would have said how much was taken out per tax year.

so- my recommendation to everyone is to keep your check stubs on file for LIFE.

[TahitiNut]

11. How do you know nobody on DU works for a guano wholesaler?

:dunce:

[OffWithTheirHeads]

13. I don't know. Are there lots of guano wholsalers around?

S.F, bay has lots of guano!

[OffWithTheirHeads]

15. Excuse me, I have been working long hours lately

and am not at the top of my game right now.

I should have realized that the Bush administration sells guano wholesale, in bulk! My bad.

[mahina]

16. Employers match your FICA bite.

What gets taken out of your check, the big bite? Yeah, your employer matches it.

Honestly, nobody 'gives up' days of their life to work. You choose to work, or you choose not to. It's not a gift on either part, it's an agreement.

[hfojvt]

18. work, steal or starve

Kind of a Hobson's choice. The employer matches the FICA taxes, but where does that money come from? I worked in a Jello factory putting plastic cups into a machine. The machine could take, say, ten boxes of cups an hour. At 48 cups to a case, that's about 415 cases which the factory sold for $12 a case to a food wholesaler. So I was part of a production chain producing $4980 worth of product every hour. Say I was 1/100th (even though there are only about 11 people on the whole line throw in 90% for overhead costs, management, machinery investment, etc.) of the process from receiving ingredients to shipping pallets. My contribution was worth $49.8 an hour, out of which my employer paid me $7.50 an hour plus 57 cents in FICA taxes and maybe 2 cents in unemployment insurance. Plus, and this is the really galling part to me - $3 or $4 an hour to the temp agency.

The point of the OP is that all of that money, including the 57 cents of their FICA contribution is coming from the value of my labor which, by my ballpark estimates was only getting paid at 1/6th of what it produced.

[bean fidhleir]

23. You're a little unclear on economic principles, Mahina

*ALL* value, without exception, comes from labor or from the operation of the physical world.

So the "employer matches" part of FICA is merely a smokescreen: that contribution, too, was created by the person it's being "given" to.

Owners and bosses create nothing. They only skim from the people who *do* create.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

26. No, (s)he's clear about them, you're not, I'm afraid.

"Bosses" (although I bet that if you take a cross section of the populace, the number of people whose job can be accurately described as "boss" is pretty damn small) work, and that work increases the total value produced by the enterprise - often by more than an equivalent amount of work by the people who actually create tangible things does.

[bean fidhleir]

27. Sorry, you're not someone from whom I'll take instruction in any area

And certainly not when you couch it as an assertion that's implicitly contradicted by common experience: labor without management can create ; management without labor cannot. QED.

Actually, given your oft-expressed politics, I even find it hard to believe you're a Scot.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

28. I take it you don't believe in fertiliser?

After all, you can grow plants - just about - in compost without fertiliser, but not in fertiliser without compost, so clearly fertilizer is worthless.

And judging the force of an argument by the person expressing it is foolish.

I'm somewhat bewildered by your last comment - which aspect of my "oft-expressed politics" do you find incompatible with being born in Scotland?

[bean fidhleir]

31. Either you're using the terms "fertiliser" and "compost" in non-standard ways

or you've to learn about farming: compost IS fertilizer.

[mahina]

41. Thanks,

I know there are a lot of jerk bosses out there, but there are a lot of small business people too who just get by, and work as hard as anyone in the endeavor. I guess our friend has a chip on the shoulder, I'm sure from his or her point of view he's right.

Whatever. I'm with you. It's not an either or, one way deal- we help each other, or we choose to do something else.

[mahina]

42. Whatevas.

Your smoke screen takes a big bite out. Anyway aloha, good luck out there with your oppression thing.

[bean fidhleir]

49. From your various responses I can see you're someone who refuses to be hemmed in by mere facts

You're a true child of the pre-scientific world.

[mahina]

57. How funny that is, and how far off you are, you'll never know.

Dennis Leary made a vid for you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPnv8UvKFzc
Bye now!

[bean fidhleir]

62. No doubt.

[dysfunctional press]

50. owners and bosses most certainly do create something- jobs.

without the owner risking his capital to purchase the machinery, the glorious workers would have no paychecks.

[TexasObserver]

61. Agreed. If it was easy, everyone would do it.

Creating and making a business work is not easy. It requires a number of components, but it mainly requires someone at the middle of it who does not think in terms of working Monday through Friday, someone who will miss a paycheck to see that his or her employees get theirs.

All this hate on business owners is misplaced. Sadly, many workers have no idea how much it costs their employers to pay their benefits, pay their salaries, handle their FICA and other payments, cover insurances, taxes, utilities, supplies, etc.

Every fruit cart, every hot dog stand, everyone who finds a little piece of the market place to serve - they're all small business people, and most of them are struggling to keep it all going. They don't work 40 hours a week. They work 70 hours, and they never get the luxury of a vacation that is free from worrying about THEIR job.

[DangerDave921]

55. Have to disagree

when you say owners and bosses create nothing. If someone starts a brand-new business, then the owner DOES create something -- a new business. If I start a coffee shop in my town, then I am creating that business. I employ a few folks to do work. And I pay them a fair wage. But I have created a business and those jobs. They wouldn't exist except for me.

Of course I need their labor to keep the business going, but that doesn't mean I'm skimming from them. They wouldn't have a job there except for me.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

39. You don't get it. Where do you think the money comes from

for your employer to "match" your contribution? His personal stash? If you were not producing the capital necessary to "Match" those contributions, you would not be working there. The point is that the whole "your employer is paying into" bullshit is smoke and mirrors. You make the money your employer seems to so generously provide to pay into these funds. If you don't produce enough capital to pay for your wages, your benefits, overhead and profit, you don't have a job. The state, the chamber of commerce, and your employer have a vested interest in making you think they are doing you some big favor so you will remain grateful and subservient but the simple fact is that YOU are the one whose work enabled that capital to exist in the first place.

[mahina]

44. You're talking to the wrong person.

And you're really mixed up about the world, from my point of view. But I'm sure you're right in yours.

I believe in the economics of cooperation, baby.

If you don't think capitalism or socialism is a just system, what do you propose?

[dysfunctional press]

51. what comes first- the workers production, or the owners risking of capital to buy the machinery...

that the worker uses to produce a product...?

[Fox Mulder]

60. I'm giving up my days to work for a company who couldn't care less about me.

I think that every person wastes his/her life working. It's a shame that I spend (waste) 40 hours a week stocking shelves for a Wal-Mart. They're making millions of dollars in profit every week and I'm only seeing $7.70/hr for all my hard work.

It's either work or starve. If I could, I'd rather not every work another day in my life. It's a shame that I have to spend my one and only life working and helping a business earn a profit.

[hfojvt]

17. sorry, that is wrong

my employer is the City. Although they charge fees for the place I work, it does not make a profit. What you said is only true of the people who work in the private, profit sector. Even there, it can be hard to tell. I worked as a janitor for a sports bar. In an hour I produced a certain amount of cleanliness, but my employer did not sell that cleanliness for more than he paid me. Cleanliness is not a tangible, saleable product and its cost was/is determined by things like minimum wage laws and competition in the labor market. (I worked for 16 months at $5.5 an hour before getting a factory job that paid $7.15 an hour. When my employer found he could not replace me for less, he matched what the factory paid.)

[OffWithTheirHeads]

37. And the bars customers would have been just as happy

and willing to spend money in a filthy bar? You produced value. Without your work, the bar would not make the same profit. The fact that your employer was willing to match wages is because he would get less profit if your job was eliminated.

[snot]

19. Good, helpful OP. K&R'd

These "contributions" are really just a way of forcing workers to fund their own retirement, which, unfortunately, it's not entirely clear they'd do otherwise.

[raccoon]

22. What are benefits?

:sarcasm:


50% of the employees at my workplace don't have them.

[Liberal In Texas]

24. And here's one of the things the execs. get that workers don't. Their income is "grossed up".

CEO's and high level officers of the company commonly have their already high salaries supplemented by the company to pay for their taxes, social security, and health insurance premiums. If an exec makes 1.2 million a year and his tax burden is, say, 400K the company "grosses up" the amount to pay for that. This is considered more of a perk than compensation, so investors only usually see the salary and not the official "tax expense" which is most often buried in obscure footnotes.

Grossing up is used to cover taxes on practically every perk (from company cars, country club memberships, and insurance) that could be considered a taxable compensation.

Who decides who gets their salary grossed up? Why they do, of course. They're running the company after all and decide how the financials are handled.

I sure wish somebody would gross up the money I pay taxes on.

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/stocks/07/gross-up.asp
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/apr/10/useconomy.executivesalaries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_up_clause

[EVDebs]

45. Plus they get paid tax breaks to outsource jobs

The Benefits Trap
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_29/b3892001_mz001.htm

"Perhaps most important, in the global economy, long-established U.S. companies are competing against younger rivals here and abroad that pay little or nothing toward their workers' retirement, giving the older companies a huge incentive to dump their plans. "

This post is bookmark worthy !

[pampango]

25. Isn't this similar to the Chamber of Commerce argument that corporations don't pay income tax.

They simply pass it on to the workers through lower wages and/or benefits or consumers through higher prices?

The employer pays corporate income tax for the same reason that they pay the "employer" share of FICA - because your labor is valuable enough to make those payments and still make a profit.

If the "employer" share of FICA didn't exist and was being discussed in Congress, the Chamber of Commerce would use the same arguments to oppose it that they use to lower or avoid corporate income taxes.

[guitar man]

29. K&R

You're 100% correct, I earn everything I get at my job and then some.

If there are any "whiners" in this country today, it's the richest among us. They piss and moan at the drop of a hat about having to turn loose of a single penny.

[BigDaddy44]

32. Well here's the question I have

If you, the worker, provide the service to your employer that your employer finds valuable enough that he can sell at a profit.... And "its your money, you earned it. It was not gifted by your employer...."

Then why even work for that employer? Why not cut out the middle man and work for yourself? Why let someone else take advantage of the fruits of your labor?

[tomp]

33. means of production. the very essence of capitalism. nt

[Kingofalldems]

34. Reads like RW talking points

Everyone a private contractor. Your post would be a big hit on Free Republic.

[Wednesdays]

40. Whoever it is, I've had 'em on my ignore list for a while

Not the first time spewing wingnut talking points, I would wager.

[MindPilot]

35. Some do--they either run their own business or "consult"

and they usually have a higher gross income and manage their own benefits. Others--I include myself in this group--find value in allowing the employer to manage those things.

[Indenturedebtor]

36. So where am I supposed to get the money and time to start a factory

You need seed money for that. Where do I get seed money? Do i live in a hole in the ground for 20 years while I save up my wage? :eyes:

[OffWithTheirHeads]

38. You have been reading too much Ayn Rand

The point is that the worker is actually producing the capital that is used to pay into these funds. The capital is not being added on because your employer is a nice person although many people have an interest in trying (and often succeding) in making workers think so.

Also, the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" argument is bullshit in so many ways that I can't even begin to get into it.

[mahina]

46. Well we agree on the last part.

Can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you have no more shoes.

[MaryRN]

43. Very well said. Thx...n/t

[trthnd4jstc]

47. I got screwed by an Employer. What should we do to him?

Sorry you got shit on. I am a tiny businessman. I try to treat the employees who work for the company that I co-own as partners, and have offered stock options to 3 of the 5 people that I am fortunate enough to have that will work with me.

I am sorry that there are stupid, self-righteous fucks. It is funnny though, remember that not all employers are rich. I am sorry that this guy screwed you. Also, I believe that Fair Trade is superior to Capitalism. Capitalism is Evil!

[provis99]

48. you all are missing an important consideration

the capitalist is entitled to his profit because that is his share in the risk he has undertaken in starting a business, and in employing you in the hopes you will help the business grow.

Or at least that's the way the Ricardian theory works.

Personally, I think capitalists are just lazy violent crooks who know how to exploit workers.

[lame54]

52. Yes, It is definitely part of OUR earnings

[pampango]

56. Exactly, just like the business/corporate income tax is part of "our" earnings.

The FICA contributions, unemployment insurance, workers compensation, work sponsored health care, area all similar in that they are a cost of doing business and employing people.

The business owner does not pay any of them, including the employer's share of the FICA tax, because he or she is a nice person, but because they have to pay them if they are going to stay in business and continue to employ people.

[DangerDave921]

53. Required by law

I've never heard an employer say he was donating voluntarily to an employee's SS fund. He has to, as required by law. And yes, it is part of the total overhead associated with hiring someone, just like health insurance, workers' comp fees, vacation time, etc.

Your salary is less because he pays part of it to the government.

[TexasObserver]

58. Yes, your employer does make such payments for your account.

Your hostility towards those who have businesses in America is absolutely appalling. Most jobs in America are created by ordinary citizens who work their asses off to make their payrolls, pay the bills, and make a decent living. The jobs are not created by the big companies. Those jobs are important, but are a very small percentage of all the jobs out there.

You can argue your points without making things up. Your topic line is 100% wrong.